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Friday, September 30, 2011

Unbelievable, they're doing it again. Our governments are giving even more free taxpayer money to banks!

Absolutely, we need to bailout Greece to save Greece, save Europe, and save the Euro. But the current bailout makes us the taxpayers pay back banks for 90% of their foolish investments. Greek people don't get a cent of investment, and we give a ton of money to rich bankers. And even worse - 30% of our money will go to speculators who will actually make a massive profit from gambling on a bailout!

How on earth did our governments write a bailout plan that floods banks and speculators with our money and leaves Greece with nothing? The answer -- they actually asked bankers to write the agreement. Our finance ministers are meeting in 3 days to decide on this plan -- let's send them and our parliaments a massive call to go back to the drawing board, and bailout Greece, not the banks:

At a time when money is tight everywhere and our most vital social programs are being cut, governments are caving in to powerful banking lobbies. But they say they are also worried that some banks can't absorb the loss of their Greek investments and will fail if they don't get a bailout. But if we get into trouble and ask a bank for help, they don't give us free money, they give us a loan, or an investment. Now the banks are in trouble and coming to us, why would we treat them any differently? Instead of giving away money, let's loan to or invest in the banks, and ask them to pay us the taxpayers back at a healthy rate of interest!

This is what Gordon Brown did in the UK and Obama did in the US - when banks were in danger of failing, they didn't bail them out with free money, they bought in with loans and investments. And as soon as a year later, the taxpayers made a profit from the deal! This deal is corruption, pure and simple. There's no public interest argument for giving banks and speculators a massive windfall like this, and there's every reason to try and protect public finances. Instead of giving that money away, we can invest it, in Greece, and in our own societies' abilities to recover and rebuild from the financial crisis. It's time for our politicians to stop hiding behind complex agreements written by bankers - the game is up - let's tell them no to this outrageous bailout, and ask them to come back again with something sensible:

Far too often, our societies' economic future, and our children's possibilities, are decided in back rooms by corrupt interests that are looking after profit, not people. This is one of those times. The bankers and the politicians they own think all this is too complex for the public to understand or even be interested. Let's show them how wrong they are.